‘Saturday Night Live’ review: Djesus Uncrossed, Marco Rubio, Christoph Waltz shine

Who knew that Christoph Waltz would be so funny? There were some serious questions before his edition “Saturday Night Live” kicked off, but by the end he had smacked any doubted metaphorically in the mouth. Maybe he benefited from the low expectations after Justin Bieber’s dud of a performance last week, but there were serious laughs to be found in almost every sketch.

Not only did we have a rare situation this week where almost every single sketch was a hit, but the misses were not so much horrible as they were merely mediocre. Be sure to also check back to this article in the morning, as we will have videos to go along with some of the selected sketches.

The shining moments

Carnival Cruise Opening – It’s commonplace for “SNL” to start things off with a current sketch, but this one was really rather brilliant: a couple of cruise-ship workers trying to cheer up their stranded passengers by basically telling them all of the other horrible things going on in the world. Bobby Moynihan as an animal trainer really ended up stealing it.

 

What Have You Become? – It was not necessarily a home-run sketch, but Waltz sold it as a megalomaniac game-show host out to humiliate and make contestants feel sorry for themselves by questioning their life achievements.

Papal Securities – A perfect and well-timed spoof of what is going on in the Catholic Church. Christianity took a beating this week in between this and the following bit, but they were at least both funny enough to justify their inclusion on the show.

Djesus Uncrossed – It probably offended some people out there, but if you are going to spoof Tarantino’s love for Waltz in his movies, this was the perfect way to do it. By far, this is one of the best compositions “SNL” has come up with all season long. A massive round of applause to the writers on this one.

The JaMarcus Brothers – It was similar to the game-show sketch in terms of laughs, but hearing Waltz play the nerdy adopted brother to a pair of romantic singers turned out surprisingly well despite not really being relevant to anything.

Most of Weekend Update – Taran Killam was absolutely delightful as Marco Rubio in a skit that you knew was coming the moment that he took a drink of water during the State of the Union Address. While Jay Pharoah’s Stephen A. Smith was really just okay, Kate McKinnon absolutely killed it as a woman who witnessed the meteor shockwaves that took place in Russia earlier this week. This was genuinely roll-on-the-floor funny, and we’re actually starting to think that McKinnon, despite being a featured player, may be the MVP of the show’s female cast right now.

Regine – This is one of Fred Armisen’s better characters, so it was something that we were rather excited to see it back. Waltz played off of him perfectly, and this was so ridiculous that we actually did see Armisen break once as he was sprawled on top of some of the other actors in the sketch.

Fox and Friends – We don’t often like this sketch when it airs early on during the show, but for the last twenty minutes of the broadcast, it was delightful, timely, and sent up Fox News better than ever.

The ones we’d like to forget

The monologue – Outside of some cheesy Austrian jokes and an unfunny musical number, nothing really to see here.

Tippy – We already had Gilly. We don’t really need it again. This was undoubtedly the low point of the entire episode … but not because of effort so much as the writing.

Overall, what was your take on “Saturday Night Live” with Christoph Waltz? Be sure to vote in the poll below, and you can see who is hosting the next new episode over at the link here.

Photo: NBC